Speaker
Description
In recent years, the demand for experimental data in cosmology, direct searches for dark matter and neutrino physics has highlighted the need to explore very low energy interactions. While Charge-Coupled Devices have proven their worth in a wide variety of fields, its readout noise has been the main limitation when using these detectors to measure small signals. The R&D done at Fermilab allowed the creation of a non-destructive readout system that uses a floating-gate amplifier on a thick, fully depleted charge coupled device to achieve ultra-low readout noise. While these detectors have already made a significant impact in the search for rare events and direct dark matter detection (SENSEI), its uses are being expanded to quantum optics, neutrino physics and astronomy. In this short talk I will go over the main principles behind the Skipper-CCD, its novel uses as particle detectors, and the current efforts at Fermilab and around the U.S. for the construction of a large multi-kg experiment for probing electron recoils from sub-GeV DM (OSCURA).